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Greg Stafford founded "The Chaosium" in 1975 to publish his board game White Bear and Red Moon. He derived the name partly from his home, which was near the Oakland Coliseum, combining "coliseum" with "chaos."

In 1978 Chaosium published Steve Perrin's roleplaying game RuneQuest, set in Stafford's mythic fantasy setting Glorantha, following up with a second edition in 1980 and various supplements over the next six years.

In 1980, the company officially incorporated as Chaosium Inc. That year, Stafford and Lynn Willis simplified the RuneQuest rules into the 16-page Basic Role-Playing (BRP). These simulationist, skill-based generic rules formed the basis of many of Chaosium's later "d100" RPGs, most notably Call of Cthulhu, first published in 1982, which has remained a significant hit through subsequent editions.

Chaosium entered into a licensing agreement with Avalon Hill in 1983 to produce a third edition of RuneQuest. Avalon Hill manufactured and marketed the game, while Chaosium was responsible for acquisitions, design, development and layout. This relationship was not financially successful for Chaosium, although several high quality and well-received products were produced in a so-called "RuneQuest Renaissance" after Avalon Hill brought acclaimed game designer Ken Rolston on board to manage the line as "Rune Czar".

In 1998, following the financial failure of the collectable card game Mythos Greg Stafford resigned as Chaosium president and left the company, along with Sandy Petersen (although they both remained shareholders). Chaosium effectively split up into various successor companies, each maintaining its focus on a few of the company's products. Stafford took the rights to his game setting Glorantha, setting up the company Issaries, Inc. to continue publishing this line (later licensing it to Moon Design Publications, along with the game HeroQuest).

Long-time employees and part-owners Charlie Krank and Lynn Willis remained at Chaosium as President and Editor-in-Chief respectively, continuing on with Call of Cthulhu as the main product line.

Problems and delays fulfilling the Kickstarters for the 7th edition of Call of Cthulhu led Stafford and Petersen to return to an active role at Chaosium in June 2015.[4] Charlie Krank subsequently left the company (Lynn Willis had died in 2013).

Later that year at Gen Con 2015, Stafford and Petersen announced Moon Design Publications were now part of the Chaosium ownership, and the four principals of Moon Design (Rick Meints, Jeff Richard, Michael O'Brien and Neil Robinson) had become the new Chaosium management team. Chaosium once again became the licensed publisher for RuneQuest, HeroQuest and other products related to Gloranthan universe, and continue to publish the Call of Cthulhu line.[5] Stafford and Petersen remained as board members (Stafford as chair), and creative consultants to the company.

Chaosium began publishing a line of non-game books (primarily fiction) in 1993. Many titles are themed around H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos and related topics, although the first work published was Greg Stafford's fantasy work "King of Sartar", set in his mythic world Glorantha.

In May, 2017, Chaosium appointed award-winning author and editor James Lowder as executive editor of fiction.[9] Lowder had previously served as a consultant for Chaosium, helping the company and freelancers resolve payment and contract problems with past fiction projects.[10]

Three magazines have been published by Chaosium to promote its products:

Wyrm's Footnotes ran for fourteen issues from 1976 to 1995. Initially it was a supporting material publication for White Bear and Red Moon but for its 11th issue, in 1981, it had become the official RuneQuest magazine.[12] The magazine was revived in 2012 by Moon Design Publications, continuing the issue numbering at 15, despite the 17-year hiatus.

Different Worlds. Forty-seven bimonthly issues from Different Worlds were published. Chaosium, from 1979 to 1985, published the thirty-eight first ones and Sleuth Publications, from 1985 to 1987, the nine last ones. In spite of being an old Chaosium's and Stafford's collaborator, Tadashi Ehara was the editor of the magazine during the periods concerned by both publishing houses.[13]